Your right, too many teams these days are going the cheap and easy way out and sacrificing the learning experience of students. That's why we have our students mine all the raw bauxite and then refine it, smelt it and extrude it into aluminium box tube.

Perhaps the reason we are all so frustrated with empty platitudes is that we do see them regularly and FIRST as an organization should aspire to be something greater than the empty soulless hellscape that is corporate mediocrity.

It's not the judges' responsibility to keep streaks alive. That's on the teams to continue pushing the envelope of what they can achieve with their programs, and continue giving the judges new and better reasons to select them each year.